1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a novel silicon-on-oxide (SOI) integrated circuit structure and method of making such structures, and more particularly, to an SOI structure and fabrication process suitable for concurrent fabrication of bipolar and CMOS devices; so-called BiCMOS devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Bipolar and CMOS devices built on silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers can achieve significantly improved performance as compared to those built on the conventional bulk silicon wafers. Bipolar devices (for example, ECL, and SRAM on SOI), have excellent soft error immunity. MOS devices fabricated on a very thin SOI layer, with fully depleted channels, have a mobility on the order of twice that of comparable bulk silicon devices and up to a forty percent improvement in transconductance. Concurrent fabrication of bipolar and CMOS devices on SOI wafers is, therefore, clearly advantageous for high-speed, high-density integrated circuits.
However, prior art SOI proposals for BiCMOS applications have not been altogether satisfactory. Thin SOI wafers created by high energy, high dose oxygen implant, have been found to have a high defect density, and are expensive. SOI wafers made by bonding methods experience difficulty in controlling silicon layer thickness and wafer to wafer uniformity. Further, with a bonded SOI process, it has heretofore been impractical to form thin layer silicon and thick layer silicon on the same substrate.
Further, typical device fabrication requires a number of high temperature process steps which stress the buried oxide layer in an SOI device and create defects that degrade device performance.